In this article, five “liberal” pundits are cited who never side with teachers.
If the article had looked beyond the “liberal” side, it would have added Jonathan Alter and David Brooks, who are firmly on the side of the “reformers” who blame teachers and their unions for all the ills of American education. Alter appeared in “Waiting for Superman,” where he lauded testing and accountability, and Brooks claimed that the charter schools of the Harlem Children’s Zone had closed the achievement gap and never posted a correction to acknowledge that it had not. Anyway, he is a self-proclaimed conservative so there is no reason to expect him to support teachers and public education.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Alter’s been bashing public sector unions since at least the PATCO strike.
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Add NY Times columnist Tom Friedman and former Tribune editor/current Daily Beast contributor James Warren to the list.
Friedman has been wrong about almost everything he has every written about – from the wonders of global free trade to the wonders of the Iraq war.
Matt Taibbi has done the best take downs of Friedman. Here’s the most famous of those:
http://nypress.com/flat-n-all-that/
Glenn Greenwald points out how Friedman is emblematic of our imperial press corps – shilling for the corporate state, but wrong about everything:
http://www.salon.com/2012/07/25/the_value_of_tom_friedman/
Somehow Friedman, despite being wrong about pretty much everything, gets to continue to pontificate about the horrors of teachers unions and the wonders of standardized test scores in China (not realizing, of course, that only a small segment of children in China take those tests and thus are counted in the scores.)
If there were a value-added score for Tom Friedman, it would be in the negative.
Read something he’s written and you lose brain cells.
As for Warren, he attacked teachers for whining about air conditioning in the Daily Beast earlier this week.
Warren doesn’t seem to care that some Chicago schools are actually in session in July and August and some teachers have to work in classrooms with 40+ students when it’s a 100 degrees.
Warren also called Karen Lewis a “bumbler,” though it seems Warren’s old newspaper thinks Emanuel was the one who bumbled into – and then through – this strike by being tin-eared and sticking to his “Demonize the Unions” strategy he’s been using since NAFTA:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-teachers-strike-emanuel-0916-20120915,0,3383662.story?page=2
As the son of stockbroker, I guess I can see why Warren would side with Emanuel and the Hyatt heiress over the students and teachers of Chicago.
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Since when is Brooks a liberal? He’s been a right wing shill for years now, and he gets more incoherent with almost each new column.
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Brooks is a “conservative,” while Friedman is a gigolo.
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She said that Brooks would be looked at if looking BEYOND liberals. He’s not a liberal. He’s just a moron.
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Did anyone else see the HORRIBLE, full-page anti-teacher’s union ad in USA Today yesterday? I was appalled. That sort of ad would NEVER appear about firefighters or police or the military without an enormous public outcry, but nary a peep from the so-called liberals or anyone else who proclaims “children first.” How does anyone expect classrooms to have experienced teachers when this sort of bashing comes from all sides. I know several of my colleagues ready to quit over this.
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In case people haven’t seen it, it shows a picture of George Wallace blocking the door at Ol’ Miss in 1963, and then compares teachers’ unions to that. It’s disgusting.
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Who paid for that ad?
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Found this…this man and his lobbyist group are behind the USA today anti-union Wallace ad:
http://www.bermanexposed.org/facts
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Thank you for finding this. What a lovely person (sarcasm alert!)
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Wait until you read the story of a Chicago school that Diane will post soon. George Wallace redux, and NOT by way of the teachers union.
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I just canceled my subscription to the NY Times and I wrote to the president and the publisher.
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Sometimes even students get it. From the mouths of babes comes this wisdom
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/video/#!/on-air/as-seen-on/One-Size-Does-Not-Fit-All–A-Students-Assessment-of-School/168998126
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A more interesting piece would be five “liberal” pundits who actually support the existence of public education. They are rarer and rarer.
About Kristof, before he went to Harvard, he actually went to a public school system and graduated from Yamhill Carlton High School in Yamhill, Oregon. It seems he has been out of the loop for far too long.
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We’ll be there Monday, the 24th. You can schedule away!! Thanks. Axel and Nancy
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It’s so hard to keep up all the teacher bashers. (It’s so interesting how we alone are ‘responsible’ for this alleged ‘problem’.) Do they even see the fallacy of their arguments or are they just stuck on stupid? (I wax nostalgic for the time up until 2007 (pre-Rhee and the ensuing media orgy and pile-on) when I was held in high regard. Now I have to constantly defend myself, my profession and integrity.
I can’t wait for the book, “While You Were Asleep. The Greatest Con since the 2008 Financial Crisis- How Billions were Diverted from Public Education in the Name of Civil Rights” (a rough, working title) Someone needs to write this. I’ll help with the title and research.
I’m sure over the next few days the list will grow. I wonder how history will judge them. I also hope that the same companies and people privatizing and destroying public education and those cheering them on; will be excluded when we have to revert back to the old methods of education. Real teaching and testing that makes sense. I can only hope that we’re not too far off in achieving this goal. Otherwise the results of this new edreform fad will leave countless American students without a true education. Perhaps this is the endgame after all? If you believe an educated population is a dangerous population then this does make sense.
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Perhaps this is the book Diane is writing!
As to your last two sentences–all too true, I’m afraid. Read Chris Hedges–he wrote about this a while back.
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The singer John Legend also blames teachers and their unions for the ills of public education. I think he is even a Teach For America board member, and he made a song for that horrible “Waiting For Superman” movie.
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If punddits attack teachers then they are not liberal.
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If pundits attack teachers they are not liberal.
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